Gotze, "Chemiefasern nach dem Viskoseverfahren", 3. Auflage, 1967, page 900, Verlag-Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York (Chemical Fibers According to the Viscose Process) describes a system in which freshly formed filaments from a spinning nozzle or spinneret are drawn from a coagulation bath by a roller pair. The filament passes in a helical pattern over the roller pair whose rollers have coplanar axes which are not, however, parallel to one another but rather include an angle with one another.
The threads looped over the roller pair move progressively therealong toward the imaginary intersection point of the two axes and automatically distribute themselves along the rollers to pass from the wet zone to a drying zone.
The wet zone encompasses that region of the path of the turns over the rollers in which filament or thread consolidation takes place and can include a deacidification zone in which the turns of the threads can be washed to free them from the acid. The drying zone encompasses a heated region of the rollers. The angular orientation of the roller axes ensures a constant spacing of the thread turns which can be about 6 millimeters from turn to turn over the entire length of the rollers.
This large spacing of the thread turns is important in the wet region or zone to avoid sticking of the turns together. Once the threads have consolidated, however, and especially in the drying zone, there is no longer a need for such a large spacing although it is in the nature of earlier systems of this type that such spacings are provided in the drying zone as well.
What is important for the drying zone is that the thread remain for a sufficient residence time in contact with the heated length of the rollers that the drying can be effected in a reliable manner. In the past, the constant spacing of the turns required rollers of considerable length to ensure a sufficient residence time in the drying zone.